Trust, Norms of Cooperation, and the Rural Credit Market in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

An examination of the loans recorded by the notary in the seigneurie of Delle during the eighteenth century sheds light on alterations to the mechanisms of trust. In early modern France, the traditional local credit market was based on strong norms of cooperation and reciprocity, in which trust was taken for granted. Changes in the nature of investors and investments during the eighteenth century, however, disturbed this fragile social equilibrium, causing trust to migrate in several new directions.

International mercantile networks and financial intermediation in nineteenth century Scania (Sweden). Foreign private capital imports and informal credit market imbalances

“…Notes 1. On the international situation there is extensive literature, see: Dermineur (2015);Finn 2003;Hoffman, Postel-Vinay, and Rosenthal (2000); Muldrew (1998); Sturm (2009). There are also several Swedish studies, see: Ågren (1992); Hellgren (2003); Isacson (1979); Lindgren (2002); Perlinge (2005);Svensson (2001).…”

Rethinking Debt: The Evolution of Private Credit Markets in Preindustrial France

“…Regarding informal credit exchanges, many small credit transactions between individuals still elude us, either because they were not archived or because they remained verbal agreements between parties (Pfister 1994: 1342). Creditor and borrower often knew each other and were bound either by family ties and/or by geographical proximity; they often exempted themselves thus from the burden of registering their transaction, which would have engendered in turn a greater cost (Dermineur 2015). They negotiated the terms of the agreement themselves, privately.…”

“…After 1760, peasants not only had to add their wives and their wives’ lineage property to the deed, but also had to find, in most cases, a third-party underwriter to reassure lenders. This crisis of trust was directly linked to the emergence of a new type of creditor (Dermineur 2015).…”

Credit, Strategies, and Female Empowerment in Early Modern France

“…Such a consensus is not surprising, as norms of cooperation and reciprocity were high in traditional communities. 67 Both the enhancement of access to resources for widows and their participation in the credit market improved their living conditions and certainly contributed to their empowerment both socially and economically. Measuring and evaluating empowerment proves to be extremely difficult, but we can observe the effects of these changes for widows here and there in other documents.…”